


Too Many Words Left Unsaid

by aj_hofacre



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Nothing to see here, and all of the characters listed aren't even there outside of name mentions, i'll shut up now, it's a Jackson background fic, just emotional schmoop, move along, that's all, then you can move along, wait no please read it first
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-01
Updated: 2012-10-01
Packaged: 2017-11-15 10:43:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aj_hofacre/pseuds/aj_hofacre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He hates. He hates so much, and it can’t possibly be natural for someone to hate like this, and he’s scared, all the time, and he doesn’t know what to do with this fear. He hates and he fears, and he wants it all to just go away so badly, to be normal, to be blissfully ignorant. He hates the Whittemores for ever telling him what they’d done."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Many Words Left Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Teen Wolf MTV fanfic competition, at the encouragement of my dear friends (and role playing team). This is all for you.
> 
> Also, this is my very first solo work for the Teen Wolf fandom. I play Jackson in my RP, so of course, I write a Jackson related fic. Hope you all like it.
> 
> Title of the fic comes from Mumford & Sons, "Liar."

Jackson Whittemore has always been sort of easy to rile up. It doesn’t take much these days - McCall’s face, for instance, or Stilinski’s words, or Lydia’s beautiful, terrible smile that makes him feel like he’s about an inch tall despite the fact that he’s actually, physically taller than her. He puts on a confident face, sneers down his nose at everyone around him, and very much enjoys the metaphorical wounds his words make in those who have dared to cross him. The only person he can stand to be around anymore is Danny, and even then, he’s been avoiding his best friend. 

Jackson is a study in perfection, most days. He wakes up in the mornings for school, dresses, coiffs his hair, purses his lips at his reflection, then drives off to school and spends the day answering his teachers’ questions, enjoying his peers’ jealousy, and firing insults at those who irritated him, all in a perfectly perfect way. He trusts in everyone around him to be fearful of Jackson Whittemore’s wrath, in the smug light of sheer superiority he held, in his intelligence and his silver-edged tongue. He trusts them to practically throw themselves prostrate before him, to plead with their eyes, desperately seeking the approval that only he could give, the approval that they only want from him. He expects people to fall all over themselves to earn his trust, eventually, and the only one who ever has, ever since they were kids, is Danny. Danny shows no signs of trusting him lately, but that might just be because of the - the other thing. The thing that crawls under his skin when he starts to lose himself, when he...

He doesn’t trust anymore. He used to - way back when he was a little brat and his parents were his parents, and he had everything that people had always dreamed of. McCall had his parents, but everyone in town knew they were fighting, and Stilinski... Stilinski still had both of his parents. Compared to them, his life was perfect. Norman Rockwell. He was practically a prince. He had it all.

He still does, if he’s honest. The Whittemores had adopted him - that showed more than anything else that they’d wanted him. (He doesn’t let himself delve too deeply into the dark thoughts that crossed his mind - what did they want him for? Did they really want him, or did they want a trophy son that they could brandish like a figurehead around town?)

Jackson can let the roar of the Porsche’s engine herald his arrival like he’s a royal, and he can hold court in high school because he’s the co-captain of the lacrosse team and the captain of the swim team and essentially ruling this school with an iron fist. He can mock the simpletons in his class because despite public perception, he’s taking almost a full course-load of AP classes and he’s actually smart as hell; and he can hold his own with Lydia Martin (and one would have to, since his crazy girlfriend made him take an IQ test before she had been so inclined to accept a date with him - but she never would have accepted had he not proven his academic intelligence to her in the first place via that stupid test.)

It’s all just a front.

Jackson Whittemore doesn’t know who he is deep down. He doesn’t look like the Whittemores. He barely knows anything about his birth parents, beyond the fact that they died while his mother was still pregnant with him. He’s aware that whatever happened that day, he’ll be entitled to a large sum of money, but that doesn’t really matter because he has money now. He wants to know who they were. He wants to know why it had to happen.

He wonders who he would be if he’d grown up Jackson Miller, instead. Or would he even have the same first name? Would he be nicer? His intelligence wouldn’t change, he thinks. But would he still be dating Lydia, or be captain of the lacrosse team, and for that matter, if he wasn’t and isn’t, would he be in the same circle of friends as McCall and Stilinski? He shudders at the thought.

Would he be able to tell Gordon and Margaret Miller that he loved them? 

He can’t bring himself to say those words. He hasn’t uttered them to his parents since the day they’d told him he was adopted - they’re still his parents in every way that counts, but the amount of blind faith he’s lost in them has zapped his affections and reset the Whittemores at a zero count. He’d trusted them, he’d trusted them so much, and now he barely wants to speak to them. He has a professional relationship with them - there’s no affection in the slightest. Not after what they’d told him.

Who tells a child, a six-year-old, that the reason they were adopted was because said child’s biological parents were killed in an accident that his adoptive parents caused?

Oh, no. They never actually said it outloud. That would be unbecoming of them.

Being the most sought after attorney in Beacon Hills had to come with some kind of perk. Apparently, hit-and-run accidents and a waiver from vehicular manslaughter by the good police of the town is included. David Whittemore and his wife couldn’t be charged with anything. Why should they be? They were the golden couple of Beacon Hills, they could never possibly do anything wrong, and so the record was struck. Washed clean of their involvement. They got to walk away with their lives, their cars, their money, no injuries, and on top of all that, a brand new baby boy to alleviate any guilt they may have had.

The Millers didn’t walk away at all.

Jackson isn’t sure who he hates more - the Millers for being stupid enough to get in their car that night, the police department of Beacon Hills (sans one Sheriff Stilinski at the time) for being so quick to kowtow to the Whittemores and whose then-Sheriff had covered up evidence, or the Whittemores themselves for causing it all.

He hates. He hates so much, and it can’t possibly be natural for someone to hate like this, and he’s scared, all the time, and he doesn’t know what to do with this fear. He hates and he fears, and he wants it all to just go away so badly, to be normal, to be blissfully ignorant. He hates the Whittemores for ever telling him what they’d done. But he fears being turned out of their house much more - he’s only seventeen, and his money is their money, and he doesn’t know where he would even go. Danny might take him in, certainly, but there’s only so much that they can take of each other, and fists would inevitably fly and their friendship would be damaged. He is barely talking to Danny, but that is something he will not risk.

He certainly won’t risk Lydia, as batty and high strung as she can be. His feelings for her point in the direction of what he thinks could be the ‘L’ word, but he won’t be saying it anytime soon. He can’t bring himself to.

So, he hates. And fears. And possibly loves, but he wrenches that emotion down with a ferocity that startles even him, and he takes that pain and anger and fear and he directs it right back to those around him. Scott McCall for suddenly overcoming his body’s natural-born stupidity to rise through the ranks and force Jackson to the side. Stiles Whatever-His-Real-Name-Is Stilinski, for being confident enough in himself to show no care for self-preservation whenever Jackson confronts him, and for having the utter guts to stand toe-to-toe with someone as terrifying as Derek Hale and making ridiculous moon eyes and snappy remarks at the magnificently large Neanderthal that Hale can prove to be; and for having the utter gall to mouth off with every single stupid word he says, as if the filter between his brain and his mouth have been removed, and the dam has broken, and he just can’t hold the words back. 

He hates Lydia for being the one thing in the world that makes him care. He hates her so much for it that he lies awake sometimes, wishing he’d never met her, had never seen her bright eyes, her sweetly cruel smile, and the long, silky tangle of her hair. 

He hates himself for being weak enough that he can’t push her away. 

He hates himself more for not being man enough to tell her how he feels. So at first, he shows her instead. Little whispered words. Light caresses. The brush of his lips, the touch of her pale skin. And when he’s stomached all he can from her little verbal barrages that make him feel worse about himself than anything else save his heritage, he tears her down in one fell swoop. Uses words he knows will hit her where it hurts, because as much as she loves to pretend that she’s not a studies-oriented woman planning to win the Fields Medal and that all she cares about are make-up and clothes, Lydia is smart enough to understand the meaning under everything.

And Jackson is smart enough to make sure the words he says are layered with another meaning entirely. It’ll hurt her, he knows. But it will keep her away; keep her safe. If she hates him, she won’t be in danger. He won’t need to worry.

He worries about himself enough as it is. He doesn’t need to worry about Lydia on top of it, too.

He doesn’t know what’s happening to him, but he knows that he’s a danger to everyone around him right now. He’s dangerous, and all because he wanted the stupid bite. He just couldn’t let it go, couldn’t back off, couldn’t leave Derek alone. He just had to have what McCall had, he had to work out what it was that made a dorky asthmatic kid into a lacrosse star, he had to force the issue because he just had to belong - 

And that’s the kicker. He doesn’t belong. He doesn’t belong anywhere, to anyone. Even his last name isn’t his own - it belongs to the rich freaks that murdered his real parents. He just gets to benefit from it. He doesn’t belong with the Whittemores, he doesn’t belong with Lydia, and he can’t even turn into a werewolf right, so clearly he doesn’t belong there. Just stupid, useless, unwanted Jackson, fighting so hard for a place to fit in, and getting shunted off to the side instead. So he forces his place - he excels at sports, he dates the most popular girl in school, and he treats everyone else like peasants, beneath him, unworthy of recognition whatsoever, and when all of this fails to fill the empty space in his chest, he lets go of it all and gives in to the loneliness.

He’s not the star of the lacrosse team anymore - McCall’s taken that from him. He’s broken up with Lydia for his sanity and for her safety, and she doesn’t even care. And he’s gone from the top of the social pyramid to the ostracized pariah of Beacon Hills High - no one wants to be around him.

He’s exhausted. And depressed. And just so bone-achingly lonely. He just doesn’t care anymore. Whatever this thing is, this creature that takes over his body at his lowest moments... it wants him. Someone - or something - wants him. And he can’t bring himself to argue over the hows and the whys and the whos. He just wants to be wanted.

Jackson Whittemore has always been sort of easy to rile up. It doesn’t take much these days - a smug look, a snide word, a voice that rings in his ears with the clarion sound of a bell - it’s all he needs to sink into his fugue. He wants to sink in; to keep sinking until there’s no way out again.

He never wants to come out.


End file.
